How do you feel about the word boredom? Does it make you want to curl your fists up in a ball? Is it something you go out of your way to avoid at all costs? Does the mention of the word send shivers down your spine?
If you answered yes to any or all of the above questions, you're not alone. Boredom as a concept is something we rage against as a society. Boredom is unusual in that, as hard as we try, it is so difficult to escape, and yet we live in a world that is designed to counteract boredom, a world where, on the face of it, boredom shouldn’t exist. We have all the social media apps, all the streaming platforms, all the websites the Internet has to offer, all the big screens in our homes and small screens on our persons, all the things we could ever need to stimulate and titillate our senses. We have all these and more at our fingertips.
And yet, despite all of the above, despite the fact that we're spoilt for choice, or perhaps because of it, we still have boredom to contend with. This idea, that we might be inundated with so many options that it becomes increasingly difficult to make a choice, almost to the point of paralysis, is called the paradox of choice. This idea was popularised by Barry Schwartz and has been extensively studied and documented in psychology literature. If you've ever found yourself scrolling through Netflix and Amazon Prime and Disney Plus and complaining that you've got nothing good to watch, then you've likely experienced the paradox of choice. It is a counterintuitive and curious phenomenon, that the more options you have to choose from, the less likely you are to make a satisfactory decision, the key word here being satisfactory.
Case in point, a 2000 study by Sheena Iyengar and Mark Lepper found that shoppers at a food market who were confronted with a display table with 24 types of jam were more likely to show interest compared to those who saw only 6 types of jam, but the latter group of shoppers were 10 times more likely to make a purchase. In other words, the display table with more jam varieties attracted more shoppers, but it resulted in fewer sales compared to the table with fewer varieties.
Despite the plethora of options and the endless sea of "stuff" available to choose from, we keep on producing and creating and manufacturing and birthing new gadgets and products and knick-knacks, all in a bid to forestall and eschew boredom. But it doesn’t work, it doesn't help, because we still get bored. It might well be the case that we're now more bored than ever. It’s almost as if we as a society have picked a battle we can’t win, a battle we’re losing woefully, but we’re just not ready to admit it. We're just not ready to pause, think on it, and raise our hands and admit that it isn't working.
So here’s an idea, why don’t we just…I don’t know, give in? Why don't we just give up this fight against boredom and lean into it? Why don't we just embrace boredom and see it for what it really is? The thing about boredom is that it is good for us, but don’t just take my word for it.
“The best way to come up with new ideas is to get really bored.” - Neil Gaiman
“Boredom allows one to indulge in curiosity, and out of curiosity comes everything.” - Steve Jobs
“Creativity is the residue of time wasted.” - Albert Einstein
These are some of the greatest writers, entrepreneurs, and scientists respectively, but don’t just take their words for it either. Psychology literature is replete with studies showing that boredom is good for us and can help to boost brain health, that boredom can spark creativity, and that boredom is a functional emotion that we’ve evolved to experience from time to time.
Despite all this evidence that boredom is beneficial, it is most unfortunate that today’s society refuses to give boredom a chance. We still scoff at the idea of boredom, both as individuals and as a collective. We're inundated with hustle culture and hyper-productivity culture, all the folks that advocate filling every minute of every day with productive work and side hustles and worthwhile ventures. There's no time to waste, they say, no room to take your foot off the pedal, lest you fall behind and the competition get ahead. You can't afford to rest or sleep or eat, they preach, unless you're doing it in the most efficient way to make you more productive. There's no point in resting or sleeping or eating for the sake of it, as worthwhile, pleasurable things to do for their own sake. We hear it in the language too, how society ridicules lazy people, how we’re taught from a young age to not daydream, how we can’t just sit and do nothing, how we have to be busy busy busy.
I used to believe all of the above, but I've had a change of heart, and so now I ask and attempt to answer, as I do week in and week out in this blog, what does this have to do with creativity? Well, this is a call to action. The aim is to start a conversation, a movement (one can dream), to say that boredom is good. Rest is good. Downtime is good. It is good for creativity. It is good for productivity. And I refuse to be like those that only advocate for rest and sleep and boredom to turbocharge one’s productivity. In this vein, I say that in so far as we can't exist in a perpetual state of productivity and creativity, boredom is essential. It provides the ebb to productive or creative flow, it is like winter if productivity is summer, like autumn if creativity is spring. Boredom isn't something to avoid, tolerate or eschew. It is something to embrace when it comes, because, as with all things, it is temporary. Succinctly put, boredom is good, just because.
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